Abbas, Olmert to Meet in Jericho

CORRECTING DAY OF PROPOSED MEETING IN CAPTION: A Palestinian boy looks on during a demonstration where banners reading 'I need my mother' are used to call for the release of female Palestinian prisoners, 04 August 2007 in the West Bank city of Ramallah. Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will 'most likely' meet the day after tomorrow in the West Bank town of Jericho, a senior Abbas aide said today. (ABBAS MOMANI/AFP/Getty Images)

by Mohammed Mar’i & Hisham Abu Taha

RAMALLAH, 5 August 2007 — Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will meet tomorrow in the West Bank city of Jericho, to try to narrow some of their differences ahead of a Mideast peace conference set for the fall in the United States, a senior Abbas aide said yesterday.

Both sides have suggested they are ready to work on a broad outline of some of the principles of a future peace deal. Palestinian officials said such an outline could be presented to the international conference, which is likely to be held in November.

In a Mideast tour earlier this week, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice tried to gauge the support of moderate Arab states for such a conference, and was told that it must yield concrete results. She also assured Abbas that the gathering would be more than a photo opportunity.

Abbas aide Nabil Amr said yesterday that Israel and the Palestinians should try to make progress ahead of the conference.

“This meeting should be a meeting of solutions, not negotiations,” he said of the conference in the US. “We have enough time to work on many issues with the Israeli side ... and so these days should be days of work, so we can arrive at the conference with resolved issues and not issues that require negotiations.” Amr said the international conference is likely to be held in New York; other Palestinian officials had only said it would be convened in the US.

Olmert’s office said the Abbas-Olmert meeting would take place in coming days, but would not give a time or place. The two leaders have met periodically in recent months, to improve relations soured by seven years of fighting and to explore ways of resuming peace talks.

Tomorrow’s meeting would mark the first time Olmert visits a Palestinian town as prime minister.

Earlier this week, Olmert said he was ready to discuss issues of substance, signaling a softening of positions. Israel had long insisted that Abbas rein in Palestinian fighters before peace talks resume.

However, after the fall of Gaza to Hamas in June, Olmert has come under growing international pressure to help shore up the moderate Abbas, who controls the West Bank. Progress toward a peace deal, coupled with renewed foreign aid for the West Bank, would signal to Palestinians that moderation pays.

The United States is pressing Israeli and Palestinian leaders to find common ground on some key issues in time for the conference that is aimed at creating a Palestinian state.

Amr said the leaders must be ready to hold “political” talks that include so-called final status issues for the creation of a Palestinian state, including borders. Officials would not say whether the two leaders would discuss the most contentious final-status questions of borders, the future of Jerusalem and the right of return for Palestinian refugees.

Olmert’s office had no immediate comment on what would be discussed tomorrow.

Olmert has rebuffed Arab calls for setting a specific timeline for final-status negotiations over a Palestinian state. But as an interim step, Olmert and Abbas will try to reach a set of common “principles” on some of the core issues related to statehood, Western diplomats and Israeli officials said.

Abbas aide Saeb Erekat said Rice was “serious” about starting talks on key questions. “No one can talk about ‘fundamental’ issues without solving the problems of borders, settlements, Jerusalem and refugees, because these are the fundamental issues for the establishment of a Palestinian state,” Erekat said.

Western officials said the parties would later appoint working groups to deal with specific areas of disagreement like Jewish settlements.

It is unclear how Abbas can deliver on any deal when a third of the likely population of a Palestinian state is under Hamas control in the Gaza Strip.

It is also unclear whether Olmert, whose popularity plummeted after last year’s inconclusive war in Lebanon, has the political clout to make major concessions.

Zakaria Al-Qaq of Al-Quds University said the effort was little more than “public relations for weak leaders.” “I don’t think this is going to produce any tangible results,” he said.

The Bush administration has sought to bolster Abbas and the new government he formed in the occupied West Bank after Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip in June.

Like Israel, the United States has told Abbas that it would be a “big mistake” for him to try to form another unity government with Hamas, which has rejected Western calls to recognize Israel, renounce violence and abide by interim peace deals, a Western official in the region said.

In another development, an Israeli airstrike on two vehicles killed two Palestinian fighters in the southern Gaza Strip yesterday.

Ambulance crews and residents in the town of Rafah, near Gaza’s border with Egypt, said missiles fired from an Israeli aircraft hit a car and a truck, killing two members of the Islamic Jihad group and wounding 15 other people.

Some residents said the truck appeared to have been disguised as an Israeli tank transporter and speculated fighters might have been planning to use it as a decoy to approach and attack Israel’s nearby Kerem Shalom border terminal.

Islamic Jihad has been behind numerous rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip against southern Israel. Minutes after the airstrikes, several rockets hit Sderot, an Israeli town near Gaza, causing no casualties.